Victorian Journalism of the Soul

Victorian Journalism of the Soul Leonard Edgar Otto 11-20-09

The field not depleted, scarred and wrinkled
of its trace minerals and water table, its soil
Awaits the average poet to plant the seed corn
or the lesser poet to become tangled up in weeds

Between the lamb's and goat milk and cash cows
the flock of red wing black birds and the sea of corn
The making of cheese, the fife gone climate warm and dry
watered down dimensions, mammals with cold blood a delicate affair

Shepherds, traveling salesmen, milk maids seduced
by the Lord of the manor, harvesting the town and gown
The truck and sheaves at the fete of the auction block
the wild boars rendered by steam tractors

Bits of persistent former dreams, garden innocence forgotten
The birth of runes of myth, great ox alphabets past ripe for compost.

* * *

Although I'm full of logic, my ravens and my writing desk
we all must go down the rabbit hole, run in place
Hitchhiking through the woods narrow paths and unpaved country roads
Our feet carrying anthrax or blight on the Norway Christmas trees
From the Fens and blogs, petrified logs of Isle of Ely to Oxford town

In search of Wessex or Yoknapatawpha, run hare and fox with hounds
afraid of cowpox inoculations, observe fan vaults of fanfare
As we hunt the witches of Salem or Endor awaiting another
padded chapter, edited in the telegraph
To become our daily local news after crossing Atlantis

The spiral ascent tot he top of towers
raising St. George's flag unto dragons can be exhausting
The descent into caves and catacombs, latent embryonic dreams
can trap us forever as the passage narrows through Sue'z canal

* * *

As the towers we build and model in real time fall for what of dawning
Light comes through the Cathedral's ceiling, we erect there a lantern.

* * *

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Footnote on the blog: The poem above was written influenced by some of the blogs I follow with perhaps since some follow or read me I should add clearer content also. So now in draft I continue the reply to posts in the sciencechatforum and philo chats just in general thinking about how we change or not over time in a rant of sorts and rambling draft intellectually considering maybe the other's intent of viewpoints.

Innate Genius may be only as deep as our ignorance, but trained genius is free from ignorance only to the worth of the training and depth of the context of available technology.

The conflicts then between science and culture as if fact or religion, on one side we're bewitched by the seeming facts of some dogma(we proud in our genius and our own discovery of it to understand). On the other side in the duller world of down to earth mystery (Lincoln's posts on religion again on the forum) some cling to metaphors (outside their field perhaps and thus the psychological need for it) as if reasonable discoveries in a way and similarly can be ignorant of that fact.

But a unified view of both sides also can question our notions of what is genius and what is ignorance and pride or embarrassment of the realization of it all we cover up over time with different reasons for our stumbles and achievements as we seek to make sense of the ever steeper curves of learning.

In a sense then not just ignorance by the deceit in our hearts but the mind itself can conjure and maintain our self deceptions, Oz behind the curtain or not. Yet, if there were not something mysteriously concrete in our thinking beyond fact and metaphor we would observe no progress, growth equal to its complexities if we desire them and solve or recognize thereby in expertise what distinguishes true science (hopefully to answer his question here) despite what it may appear Lincoln's can be seen as a serious question (from my view put awkwardly in the language)that does not just appeal to the polemics of philosophy with suspect metaphors taken also awkwardly at face value.